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The Aladdin Effect – Marvel Graphic Novel #16


By James Shooter, David Michelinie, Greg LaRoque & Vince Colletta (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-081-7

Marvel don’t generally publish original material graphic novel anymore but once they were market leader in the field with a range of “big stories” told on larger pages emulating the long-established European Album (285 x 220mm rather than the standard 258 x 168mm of today’s books) featuring not only proprietary characters in out-of-the-ordinary adventures but also licensed assets like Conan, creator-owned properties like Alien Legion and new character debuts.

This extended experiment with big-ticket storytelling in the 1980s and 1990s produced many exciting results that the company has never come close to repeating since. Most of the stories still stand out today – or would if they were still in print.

Released in 1985, The Aladdin Effect was an attempt to capitalise on the company’s growing stable of female characters and – I’m guessing – target the notoriously scarce and fickle maturing female readership with something more exclusively to their tastes and aspirations. This conventional but highly enjoyable Fights ‘n’ Tights thriller was conceived and concocted by Editor Jim Shooter, scripted by David Michelinie and illustrated by Greg LaRoque & Vince Colletta.

Joe Ember is a good man, loving husband and father: sheriff of the isolated community of Venture Ridge, Wyoming but someone looking the end of the world in the face…

Two months ago the little town lost all hope and has been sliding into decadence, anarchy and ruin. Sixty days ago, without explanation the rural community was surrounded by an invisible, impenetrable forcefield and trapped like bugs under glass.

Cut off from the world, with food and power dwindling, the people have begun to go mad…

Little Holly-Ann isn’t worried: the little girl knows her daddy will keep everyone safe even if so many old friends and neighbours are acting strange and scary. The little girl is a dreamer and fan of New York’s superheroes. She especially adores the women like Storm, She-Hulk, Tigra and the Wasp and wishes that she could be like them…

When Joe, crumbling under pressure, destroys her scrapbook Holly-Ann goes to sleep extremely upset and really, really wishes…

Next morning an amnesiac stranger is seen on the streets: a striking black woman with white hair and blue eyes. When the mob attacks her the stranger easily cows them all and Holly-Ann knows it is the mutant X-Man Storm.

At last an answer begins to form when a mysterious being called Timekeeper reveals himself and demands that the incomprehensible power-source hiding in the city reveals itself – or the city will be destroyed within 24 hours…

When Storm tries and fails to shatter the forcefield, the She-Hulk appears, also with muddled memories but just as determined to help little Holly-Ann. Soon after both the Wasp and Tigra are discovered and the sinister secret technologists of AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) are discovered as the true cause of all the town’s problems.

When She-Hulk tackles them she is almost beaten to death by the army of super scientific soldiers…

With only hours remaining before the deadline, the battered community and diminished super-women prepare for the overwhelming onslaught to come…

Terrified and outmatched Joe Ember is ready to surrender all hope but his valiant daughter shows him another way and, regaining his sense of purpose, he galvanises the ordinary folk and leads them in a last ditch battle for their town, their lives and their souls…

A stirring mix of childhood fantasy and mature B-movie thriller, all wrapped up in Marvel madness and with loving overtones of the Magnificent Seven, this extremely uncompromising and occasionally explicit tale delivers action, tension and soul-searching drama for both the faithful readership and even the newest kid on the block looking for a different kind of story….
© 1985 Marvel Comics Group/Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Batman: the Dark Knight Archives volume 3


By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson & George Roussos & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-615-X

With this third magnificent compilation of the epochal early Batman, the Dark Knight entered his fourth year of publication and the expanded creative team truly hit their stride, providing spectacular escapist thrills and chills for readers on the home front and even in the far-and-widely deployed armed services as 1942 brought America fully into the war and deadly danger never seemed closer…

This full-colour deluxe hardback tome (collecting the classic contents of Batman #9-12 from February/March to August/September 1942) opens with an expansive introduction from modern Bat-scribe Mike W. Barr, and also saw the introduction of an extensive contents section and detailed biographies for those talented folk who crafted these Golden Age greats.

The Dynamic Duo were popular sensations whose heroic exploits not only thrilled millions of eager readers but also provided artistic inspiration for a generation of comics creators and with America wholeheartedly embracing World War II by this period and the stories – especially the patriotic covers – went all-out to capture the imagination, comfort the down-hearted and bolster the nation’s morale.

Batman #9 is regarded as one of the greatest single issues of the Golden Age and is still a cracking parcel of joy today. Due to the unique “off-sale” dating system of the USA the issue hit the newsstands in time for Christmas 1941, with all the stories written by Bill Finger and illustrated by Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson & George Roussos. Moreover the issue sports possibly the most reproduced Batman cover ever; crafted by the brilliant Jack Burnley.

Within those pages the action began with ‘The Four Fates!’: a dark and moving human interest drama featuring a quartet of fore-doomed mobsters, after which our heroes ship out in ‘The White Whale!’, a mind-bending maritime crime saga loosely based on the classic Moby Dick, followed by another unforgettable Joker yarn ‘The Case of the Lucky Law-Breakers’ and the birth of a venerable tradition in an untitled story called here for expediency’s sake ‘Christmas’.

Over the decades many of the Dynamic Duo’s best and finest adventures have had a Christmas theme (and why there’s never been a Greatest Batman Christmas Stories volume is a mystery I’ve pondered for years) and this touching – even heart-warming – story of absent fathers, petty skulduggery and little miracles is where it all really began. There’s not a comic fan alive who won’t dab away a tear…

Following a stunning, whimsical and fourth-wall busting cover by Fred Ray & Robinson Batman #10 commences with another four classics. ‘The Isle that Time Forgot’ written by Joseph Greene, finds the Dynamic Duo impossibly trapped in a land of dinosaurs and cavemen, whilst ‘Report Card Blues’ also with Greene scripting, has the heroes inspire a wayward kid to return to his studies by crushing the mobsters he’s ditched school for. Jack Schiff typed the words for the classy jewel-heist caper (oh, for those heady days when Bats wasn’t too grim and important to stop the odd robbery or two!) ‘The Princess of Plunder’ starring everyone’s favourite Feline Femme Fatale Catwoman, and the boys finished up by heading way out West where the Gotham Guardian became ‘The Sheriff of Ghost Town!’ in a bullet-fast blockbuster scripted by Bill Finger.

Batman’s unsung co-creator also wrote three of the four epic adventures in Batman #11, beginning with the cover-featured shocker ‘The Joker’s Advertising Campaign’ wherein the Clown prince took ideas for big crimes from the small ads section of the papers whilst ‘Payment in Full’ related a touching melodrama about the District Attorney and the vicious criminal to whom he owed his life. Pulp sci fi author Edmond Hamilton wrote the mystery ‘Bandits in Toyland’ wherein a gang of high-powered burglars and bandits only stole dolls and train-sets from kids before Finger returned to concoct ‘Four Birds of a Feather!’ with Batman in Miami to scotch the Penguin’s dreams of a crooked gambling empire.

Batman #12 (Aug/Sept 1942) promptly follows with another four instant classics. ‘Brothers in Crime’ by Don Cameron & Jerry Robinson, captivatingly revealed the tragic – positively Shakespearean – fates of a criminal family who had every chance to change their ways whilst the Joker returned in ‘The Wizard of Words’ by Finger, Kane, Robinson & Roussos with the Green Haired Horror applying his homicidal mind to murderously making homilies and folk phrases chillingly literal…

Finger also scripted the final two tales in this issue and the volume, with Jack Burnley illustrating the major portion of the spectacular crime thriller about daredevil stuntmen ‘They Thrill to Conquer’ whilst Kane, Robinson & Roussos wrapped it all up with ‘Around the Clock with Batman’ – a “typical” day in the life of the Dynamic Duo complete with blazing guns, giant statues and skyscraper near-death experiences.

These are stories which forged the character and success of Batman. The works of co-creators Finger and Kane and such multi-talented assistants as Robinson, Roussos, Ray, Burnley and the rest are spectacular and timeless examples of perfect superhero fiction. Put them in a lavish deluxe package like this and include the pop art masterpieces that were the covers of those classics and you have pretty much the perfect comicbook book.
© 1942, 2000 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Maus volumes 1 & 2: My Father Bleeds History & And Here My Troubles Began


By Art Spiegelman (Pantheon/Penguin)
ISBN: 978-0-14017-315-4 & 978-0-14013-206-9

Also available as: Complete Maus: A Survivors Tale
ISBN: 978-0141014081

During the 1980s, English-language comics finally began to be accepted by the wider world and that’s in no small part due to the groundbreaking success of an independent funny-animal comic for adults which quite rightly took the world by storm.

Most of you will probably have read this incredible tale already – and if you have feel free to skip the following tirade – but on the rare chance that you haven’t but are still open to persuasion I offer these thoughts…

Art Spiegelman first began his exploration into his family’s history in 1972 when he created a short strip for the Underground anthology Short Order Comix, in which he first examined his own reactions and response to his mother’s suicide in 1968. That tale led to a desire to understand his extremely difficult father Vladek and a determination to turn his recollections and experiences as a Holocaust survivor into a series of strips.

The individual chapters of what would become Maus began appearing at the end of the decade as monochrome mini-comic inserts in Spiegelman’s experimental and increasingly prestigious art-house anthology Raw! with the first collected edition of the scratchy, primally evocative chapters released in 1986 and a concluding volume published in 1991.

This is a graphic masterwork everybody should read and I’m hesitant to give too much away in a review, but in the hope of enticing any new readers or late hold-outs here are the bare bones…

My Father Bleeds History introduces the young Spiegelman and his father Vladek in 1958, in the sparse and primitive anthropomorphic style that did so much to rightly shade this tale as “History” and “Autobiography” rather than “Fiction” on library and bookshop shelves.

‘The Sheik’ re-introduces them both decades later.

Vladek is a crusty old kvetch even his son finds hard to deal with. The old man’s second wife Mala suffers greatly with her husband’s odd, penny-pinching, bigoted and fiercely independent ways and manners. Over an uncomfortable dinner Art convinces his dad to speak about his life during wartime…

It all began with good times in Czestochowa, a Polish city close to the German border and relates how the youthful, stylish, even rakish entrepreneur found true love whilst pursuing and winning the wealthy Anja Zylberberg, whilst ‘The Honeymoon’ detailed the frail woman’s clandestine connection to the pre-war Communists, the birth of their first child Richieu – paralleled with some poignant modern day interjections regarding Art’s own birth – and presented the first inklings of what was to come when the happy couple visited Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938, culminating in Vladek’s being drafted into the Polish Army in August 1939…

With his contemporary home-life deteriorating and ill health overtaking him Vladek relates how he became a ‘Prisoner of War’ almost immediately after induction into the military and separated from the Christian Poles in the German POW camp. Suffering extreme hardship and particular abuse, the Jewish prisoners were offered the chance to volunteer for labour assignments in exchange for better conditions.

The job was literally moving mountains…

Whilst working for the invaders Vladek had a vision which carried him through all the horrors of the conflict, and in the short-term led to his repatriation when the German work project finished. Even with the Jewish workers dispatched back to Poland, Vladek knew the Nazis had not finished with the Jews…

By guile and sheer enterprise he made his way back to Anja and Richieu in Sosnowiec and began a brief career on the wrong side of the law as new rules and old prejudices made life increasingly difficult for Jewish citizens…

In 1941 ‘The Noose Tightens’ with his friends and acquaintances enduring increasing hardship but still refusing to see the way the winds were blowing. Vladek carried on ducking and diving to keep his family alive, but the occupiers were becoming ever bolder and entire enclaves of Jews were being transported on the flimsiest pretexts. The Spiegelman’s were compelled to give Richieu away to keep him safe. Now Vladek was a full-time trader of illegal and contraband goods, constantly risking his life. Even with the transportations gathering pace most Jews believed they were merely being deported or exiled, but Vladek began preparing a hiding place for the family: a bunker to live out the war. In August 1942 a mass “passport inspection” in Sosnowiec practically emptied the town of Jews – an event for which Spiegelman’s step-mother Mala offered her own participant survivor’s perspective…

‘Mouse Holes’ opens with Art having to referee Vladek and Mala’s latest confrontation and incorporates the 1972 prologue strip ‘Prisoner on the Hell Planet’ which depicted the events following Anja’s suicide in 1968. When Vladek reads the strip it prompts him to a new level of revelation…

In 1943 the final round-up of Polish Jews began and with daily atrocities mounting, the family fostering Richieu chose death rather than the camps. Vladek and Anja took to their bunker with their remaining friends but after torturous weeks they too were captured leaving the couple alone, desperate and hunted…

The first volume concludes with ‘Mouse Trap’ as in the present day Vladek and Mala’s relationship deteriorates even further with Art caught impossibly in the middle – leading the embittered and belligerent old man to finally disclose how he and Anja were caught masquerading as non-Jews and sold to the Nazis by gangsters…

In March 1944 they were sent to Auschwitz and separated…

The second volume And Here My Troubles Began (From Mauschwitz to the Catskills and Beyond) concentrates equally between Vladek’s memories and his catastrophic present-day (1979) relationship with second wife Mala, beginning with ‘Mauschwitz’ as Art was dragged to the Catskills after Vladek faked a heart attack. In truth the crisis was that Mala has left him and emptied one of his bank accounts…

After much acrimony and acting out Vladek buys his son’s attention and goodwill by revealing how life in Auschwitz worked and how even in the worst of all possible situations, a smart operator could soften the pain and even perhaps profit whilst surviving…

‘Auschwitz (Time Flies)’ creatively jumps to recount Vladek’s death in 1982 and the reaction to the public sensation which followed the release of the first volume, before returning to the death-camp where Vladek discovered that an adjoining camp – Auschwitz II/Birkenau – held women prisoners and that Anja was still alive…

Exerting all his wiles and scams Vladek manages to get himself assigned there as a repairman and is reunited – albeit through barbed wire – with his wife. Meanwhile all around them, the Nazis were frantically exercising their horrific “Final Solution”…

With Vladek quickly driving Art and his wife Françoise crazy ‘…And Here My Troubles Began…’ simultaneously explores the ongoing father-son relationship as the old man gradually describes the last days of the death-camp, with daily privation constantly punctuated by the rapidly approaching sound of Allied artillery getting ever closer.

The terrified guards moved the prisoners in ghastly forced marches into Germany and a new camp where the worst atrocities occurred after the survivors were forced onto packed cattle-trains as the Jew were moved towards their final fate in Dachau…

Enduring, brutality, betrayal and disease the prisoners waited for the inevitable end but inexplicably found themselves again herded onto trains and shuttled towards Switzerland…

‘Saved’ sees the bewildering old man at his anti-social worst whilst describing how they were released near the border, in an exchange for German POWs, only to suffer one final betrayal before being found by American soldiers…

Free and safe, Vladek shares with his son intimate details of the friends and family forever lost before the final chapter ‘The Second Honeymoon’ begins months later with a frantic call from Mala. She and Vladek had reconciled in Florida but now he was sick again and had discharged himself from hospital, determined to be treated in New York. Art reluctantly travels South to accompany his father and learns of the immediate post-war years when the last survivors travelled to Sweden and settled there, once again depending on his guile and ability to make deals to thrive.

Eventually Vladek and Anja obtained visas for America and emigrated…

From his sickbed the tired survivor at last reveals the magical events of the immediate post-war days. Of life in a Displaced Persons camp, relapsing into typhus, contracting diabetes and being assigned to work details rebuilding Germany, ending with his journey back to Sosnowiec where Anja, having consulted a Gypsy fortune teller, was waiting…

Maus is a fabulous, horrible, poignant and captivating examination of not just the most appalling moments of modern history and worst examples of human depravity but also how tribulation shapes and recasts survivors: not merely a brilliant comic story but a magnificent example of narrative as history. It a tale no one should be unfamiliar with.
© 1973, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 Art Spiegelman. All rights reserved.

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The Flash: Ignition


By Geoff Johns, Alberto Dose, Howard Porter & Livesay (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0463-1

There are many super-speedsters in the DCU and most of them congregate in the conjoined metropolis of Keystone and Central City. Wally West, third incarnation of The Flash, lived there with his true love Linda Park, his Aunt Iris and rocket-racers such as Jay Garrick, with juvenile speedster from the Future Impulse and his mentor/keeper Max Mercury, the Zen Master of hyper-velocity, only an eye-blink away…

Created by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert, Garrick debuted as the very first Scarlet Speedster in Flash Comics #1 (January 1940). “The Fastest Man Alive” wowed readers for over a decade before changing tastes benched him in 1951. The concept of speedsters and superheroes in general was revived in 1956 by Julie Schwartz in Showcase #4 when police scientist Barry Allen became the second hero to run with the concept.

The Silver Age Flash, whose creation ushered in a new and seemingly unstoppable era of costumed crusaders, died heroically during Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986) and was promptly succeeded by his sidekick Kid Flash. Of course Allen later returned from the dead – but doesn’t everyone?

Initially Wally West struggled to fill the boots of his predecessor, both in sheer ability and, more tellingly, in confidence. Feeling a fraud, he nonetheless persevered and eventually overcame, becoming the greatest to carry the name.

This volume reprints issues #201-206 of Wally’s long-gone-and-much-missed monthly comic and opens in the aftermath of a blockbusting battle which tore the Twin Cities and the extended Flash Family apart.

In the wake of those events the Scarlet Speedster disappeared and, thanks to the intervention of nigh-omnipotent spirit The Spectre, everyone who knew Wally West was the Flash forgot the secret.

Unfortunately that also included Linda and Wally too…

Scripter Geoff Johns and artists Alberto Dose, Howard Porter & Livesay kick started a new era in the hero’s life with ‘Driven’ as the double metropolis began to suffer the lack of a super-fast protector. Crime went up and a wave of cold-themed killings seemed to indicate that former thief Captain Cold had graduated to homicidal mania. Meanwhile, slow but steady police garage mechanic Wally West plodded on with his new job, fixing the battered vehicles of Keystone PD and coming to terms with the fact that Linda has just miscarried their unborn child…

When a huge car-crash jump-started his powers an ultra-swift Wally was baffled, but by the end of ‘Shifting Gears’ had deduced that his newfound ability to not be killed by a variety of accidents and attacks meant something or someone had messed with his mind…

In ‘Crash and Burn’, as the freeze murders escalated and with every cop hunting Captain Cold, Wally was forced to confront the fact that he must be the long-missing Flash. He has a long, illuminating chat with a guy in a diner; and if he had been in possession of his memories he would have realised that he’d just shared coffee and philosophy with the suspected murderer everybody wanted…

Back in the scarlet suit but with his memories still vague, Wally tracked the icy felon but evidence was slowly pointing to another killer framing the sub-zero scoundrel – a suspicion confirmed when the befuddled speedster was attacked by a new Mr. Element and only saved by the Bad Captain in ‘Cold Reality’.

Whilst Linda, tormented by insidious dreams, left Wally, her confused husband was driven to research the life of the Flash; convinced at last that it was his own, and when Batman hit town, determined to discover who had doctored the memories of the entire Justice League, the motive behind the miracle was finally uncovered in ‘Secrets’ culminating in a spectacular confrontation with the true killer, a poignant reconciliation with Linda and a blistering fresh start for the Fastest Man alive in ‘Up to Speed’…

For more than seven decades the adventures of the Flash have been the very acme of superhero storytelling, with successive generations of inventive creators producing the very best of high-speed action and superlative drama. This is another of those supremely readable classics and a terrific place for new readers to jump aboard the rollercoaster…
© 2004, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Drain Pig and the Glow Boys in “Critical Mess”


By Dan Pearce
ISBN: 0-86245-103-5

Once upon a time it was acceptable and desirable rather than just cool for entertainers to be political. Music, film, comedy and especially comics and cartoons rather than today’s obsessions with sex, parenthood and celebrity were at the forefront of social and political criticism…

From the Plutonium Age of Comics comes this scarce, all but unknown, but still readily locatable little lost gem by Dan Pearce which perfectly captured all the daily indignities and nightly horrors of the Thatcher years: the rise of untrammelled greed, the death of personal responsibility and the celebration of conscienceless self-aggrandisement…

I’m ashamed to say that I know very little of this wickedly effective dark satire, although it does look as if the saga was released in strip or magazine instalments a la Steve Bell’s Worlds of If… or Donald Rooum’s stunningly funny Wildcat series.

As ever if anyone knows more, I’d love to hear from you…

Drain Pig is a social leper and despised outcast: a full-grown talking animal who ekes out a pathetic existence living in the sewers. One dreadful night he sees the woman who raised him but when he tries to talk to her she denies him and has him arrested.

The wealthy Mrs. Berkely-Hunt is a pillar of the community and well-in with the powers that be: how could someone of her standing possibly know a scumbag like Drain Pig?

Meanwhile her daughter Mag has started a job as the newest journo for the Daily Dross and her first day is spent covering the trial of the ghastly layabout and social dreg…

She is shocked to see her mother as witness and complainant and horrified when she realises the maternal Society snob is lying in her teeth. The railroaded pig gets five years hard labour when the Judge forces a guilty verdict…

Meanwhile Mag’s scientist boyfriend Mike is travelling to Sizemould Nuclear Power station on a fact-finding mission investigating reports of leaks and mutations.

Mag forces Mummy to tell the truth: Drain Pig was once the beloved companion of a scientist who named him Danny. Her mother, still an impressionable girl herself, was named executor and guardian of the piglet’s inheritance.

Mrs. Berkely-Hunt then reveals how she grew to despise the low beast, leading to the dowager’s flushing the poor piglet down to loo to get rid of him whilst keeping his endowment for herself and making a socially advantageous marriage.

Appalled, the plucky reporter resolves to make amends but discovers to her disgust that the pitiful porker has been deliberately lost within in the prison system…

Meanwhile the secret connections between Britain’s sales of weapons-grade Plutonium and the decrepit, radiation-leaking power station are beginning to circulate and Mag is sent to cover the protesters peace-camp set up around the plant.

Whilst there she interviews Bernard Klein, the physicist who originally built Sizemould; now the spiritual leader of the movement to close it down. Amidst determined, well-intentioned campaigners and a host of four-clawed crabs, Mag learns of the “rabble’s” only success – convincing all the local unemployed not to take jobs as “glow boys” or pipe repairmen.

So faulty is the building that steam generator and water-system repairs are necessary every day, but the ruptures and escapes are so radioactive that workers can only safely be exposed to the pipes for 30 minutes a year!

Unknown to all, however, the ruthless controllers of the plant and the Ministry have worked out a perfect solution: use hardcore convicts nobody will miss as the unwitting repairmen. As long as the public is kept in the dark nobody important will care…

However when Mag glimpses the long missing Drain Pig through the security fences and armed paramilitary guards policing Sizemould, she knows something dirty is up…

With her editor rewriting and slanting her copy, the plant’s technical director in a drug-and-booze filled meltdown, Special Branch infiltrating the protest camp and bugging phones, an ambitious junior circumventing what few safety-protocols still remain in the plant and a snap inspection by Men from the Ministry (of Defence as well as Energy…), the situation looks ripe for an explosive confrontation…

And then Bernie Klein is murdered and everything starts to spectacularly unravel…

Blending Machiavellian intrigue with baroque humour and perfectly riding the popular wave of corrupt back-door deals, old boy network cronyism and vile elitism which has become the hallmark of the period, Drain Pig and the Glow Boys tells a captivating tale in compelling, evocative visual style enticingly reminiscent of the best of Underground Commix’ stars such as R. Crumb and Spain Rodriguez.

Despite being as funny as The New Statesman, mordantly surreal as Whoops, Apocalypse! and as trenchantly biting as Spitting Image, Critical Mess never caught the battered, impoverished public’s attention – although the book still has its passionate supporters to this day.

Perhaps it was because Pearce was too good at his job. Not only is this a bitingly savage satire on the times, but a well-reasoned and minutely researched assault on the idiocies and inadequacies of the Nuclear industry, “legitimate” Arms deals and exports and a blistering attack on the Press and legal system.

It’s also a superbly well-written thriller with stark overtones of David Drury’s 1985 film Defense of the Realm and the gloriously absurdist swingeing satire of Gulliver’s Travels or Animal Farm…

If this kind of honest incisive, important cartoon work appeals there are still copies to be found at incredibly reasonable prices and the author is still active, still passionate, still angry (and rightly so  after all these years) and can be found here…
© Dan Pearce 1983.

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Johnny Hazard: Mammoth Marches On


By Frank Robbins (Pacific Comics Publications)
No ISBN

Johnny Hazard was a newspaper strip created in answer to and in the style and manner of Terry and the Pirates, but in many ways the steely-eyed hero most resembles – and indeed presages – Milton Caniff’s second magnum opus Steve Canyon.

Unbelievably, until last year this stunningly impressive and enthralling adventure strip has never been comprehensively collected in graphic novels – at least in English – although selected highlights had appeared in nostalgia magazines such as Pioneer Comics and Dragon Lady Press Presents.

However, sporadic compendiums of the full-colour Sunday pages have popped up over the years, such as this glorious and huge (340 x 245mm) landscape tabloid produced by re-translating a collected Italian edition back into English, courtesy of the Pacific Comic Club.

Frank Robbins was a brilliant all-around cartoonist whose unique artistic and lettering style lent themselves equally to adventure, comedy and superhero tales and his stunning cunning storytellers mind made him one of the best writers of three generations of comics.

He first came to fame in 1939 when he took over the Scorchy Smith newspaper strip from the legendary Noel Sickles and created a Sunday page for the feature in 1940. He was offered the prominent Secret Agent X-9 but instead created his own lantern jawed, steely-eyed man of action. A tireless and prolific worker, even whilst producing a daily and Sunday Hazard (usually a separate storyline for each) Robbins freelanced as an illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post, Look, Life and a host of other mainstream magazines.

In the 1960s and 1970s he moved into comicbooks, becoming a key contributor to Batman, Batgirl, Detective Comics (where he created Man-Bat with Neal Adams), The Shadow and DC’s mystery anthologies before settling in as an artist at Marvel on a variety of titles including Captain America, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Morbius, Human Fly, Man from Atlantis, Power Man and The Invaders, which he co-created with Roy Thomas.

When the strip launched on Monday June 5th 1944, Johnny Hazard was an aviator, in the United States Army Air Corps and when hostilities ceased became for a while a freelance charter pilot and secret agent before settling into the bombastic life of a globe-girdling troubleshooter, mystery-solver and modern day Knight Errant babe-magnet.

The strip ended in 1977: another victim of diminishing panel-sizes and the move towards simplified, thrill-free, family-friendly gag-a-day graphic fodder to wrap around small-ads.

With the release at long last of a dedicated collection of the black and white Daily strips, I thought I’d spotlight a few of those fabulous landscape tomes which kept Johnny Hazard alive in fans hearts during years after it ceased publication beginning with the thoroughly captivating Mammoth Marches On and subsequent sequences which first appeared in American Sunday Supplements between January 27th 1952 to April 12th 1953.

In the steaming jungle heat of French Indo-China the pilot is transporting famed Movie Director Grippman of Mammoth Studios, and his star attraction Cerise to the heart of the rain forest on a location-shoot is stricken with malaria. Forced to land at a Military field they make the fortuitous acquaintance of our hero and his friends Brandy and Blitz Martin; all currently without a plane of their own…

Also in tow are an entire film crew, assorted extras and a baby Elephant, all destined for a distant abandoned temple and village of unsuspecting natives. Short of cash and with nothing to do, Johnny lets himself be talked into taking the pilot’s place whilst wandering journalist Brandy agrees to act as the haughty Cerise’s stand-in and body double… to limit the star’s exposure to sun, insects and peasants…

Amidst all the drama and passion such events always generate, Johnny warily keeps aloof. The big scene involves an ancient idol for which Grippman has brought a fist-sized hunk of glass to replace the legendary lost diamond eye it boasted until white explorers first appeared a century ago…

When Cerise makes a play for Hazard and is rebuffed she storms into the temple and falls into a secret chamber, finding the genuine lost sparkler. In a fit of greedy pique she replaces the fake with the real thing…

The trained baby elephant Mammoth has seen it all and Cerise determines to get rid of the four-footed witness in an increasing dangerous series of arranged accidents…

Things come to head when the monsoon hits early and disaster strikes for the greedy starlet…

The strip then effortlessly segues into blistering criminal action with ‘The Hunted’ as Johnny ferries the film crew on to Tokyo where old pal Blitz buys a souvenir samurai sword from a street vendor. Of course nobody realised that the katana was a thousand year old relic most recently owned by Baron Takana: a big shot in the recent war and a fugitive war criminal ever since.

When the sword is stolen and a venerated historical expert murdered, suspicion rests equally on the elusive Takana and Hazard’s sexy femme fatale foe Baroness Flame, but as the hunt continues the drama escalates into full-blown crisis when the fugitive Baron is cornered and threatens to detonate a stolen atomic weapon…

The fabulous frantic fun and thrills conclude with ‘Scavengers’ as Johnny is asked by his old boss Lisbeth Manning to investigate a series of mysterious plane crashes and cargo thefts. With typical savvy Hazard deduces the method and tracks the gang of highly sophisticated bandits to a deadly confrontation in the jungles between Vietnam and Cambodia, before this stunning old-fashioned romp ends with the thieves in custody and the tantalising opening pages of the next mind-boggling yarn ‘Ceiling Zero-Minus’.

To be continued…

These exotic action romances perfectly capture the mood and magic of a distant but so incredibly familiar time; with cool heroes, hot dames and very wicked villains decorating captivating locales and stunning scenarios, all peppered with blistering tension, mature humour and visceral excitement.

Johnny Hazard is a brilliant two-fisted thriller strip and even if you can’t easily locate these fantastic full-colour chronicles, at least the prospect of an eventual new Sunday strip collection is a little closer at last…
© 1952-1953 King Features Syndicate. © 1979 Pacific C.C.

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Batman Archives volume 2


By Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, George Roussos & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 0-930289-60-9

The history of the American comicbook industry in most ways stems from the raw, vital and still completely compelling tales of two iconic creations published by DC/National Comics: Superman and Batman. It’s only fair and fitting that both those characters are still going strong and that their earliest adventures can be relived in chronological order in both relatively cheap softcover chronicles and magnificently lavish hardback compilations.

This second sturdy deluxe edition of Batman’s classic crime-busting Detective Comics cases spans the period from May 1941-December 1942 and features all his exploits from issues #51-70. The majority of the stories were written by Bill Finger and the art chores shared out between Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson & George Roussos. Those necessary details dealt with, what you really need to know is that this is a collection of Batman yarns which see the character grow into an icon who would inspire so many: all whilst developing the resilience and fan-dedication to survive the many cultural vicissitudes the coming decades would inflict upon him and his partner, Robin.

As with many of these first print Archive collections, there are no contents pages or creator credits, so for the sake of expediency I’ve again used information and story-titles from later collections to facilitate the review.

After an overview and Foreword from crime novelist and sometime Batman scripter Max Allan Collins, the excitement is unleashed with ‘The Case of the Mystery Carnival’ as the Dynamic Duo liberated a circus from crooks who had taken it over, after which they tackled the insidious terror of Chinese Tongs in ‘The Secret of the Jade Box’ (Detective Comics #52) and solved the tragic problems of suicidal actress ‘Viola Vane’: all mood-soaked set-pieces featuring commonplace human-scaled heroes and villains.

‘Hook Morgan and his Harbor Pirates’ saw the Dynamic Duo spectacularly clean up the evil-infested city docks whilst Detective #55 took them back to fantasy basics with the spectacular mad scientist thriller ‘The Brain Burglar’ after which a quick vacation visit to a ghost-town resulted in a stunning confrontation with a rampaging monster in the eerie action-romp ‘The Stone Idol’.

Detective #57 featured ‘Twenty-Four Hours to Live’, a tale of poisonings and Crimes of Passion, whilst the perfidious Penguin debuted in the next issue to make our heroes the victims of ‘One of the Most Perfect Frame-Ups’ before cropping up again in #59, making a play to control Mississippi; turning his formidable talents to bounty-hunting his fellow criminals in ‘The King of the Jungle!’

That tale was written by Joseph Greene and Jack Schiff, who had a long and auspicious career as an editor at DC, scripted ‘The Case of the Costume-Clad Killers’ from Detective Comics #60, another excursion into larcenous mania with the Joker again stealing the show – and everything else.

‘The Three Racketeers’ is a magnificent story gem and much-reprinted classic (aren’t they all?) from an era packed with both explosive thrillers and tense human dramas. This perfect example of the latter saw a trio of criminal big-shots swap stories of the Gotham Guardians over a quiet game of cards and has a sting-in-the-tail that still hits home more than fifty years later.

It’s followed Finger, Kane & Robinson’s epic clash ‘Laugh, Town Laugh!’ (Detective #62) wherein the diabolical Joker went on a terrifying murder-spree to prove to the nation’s comedians and entertainers who truly was “King of Jesters”.

Those creative giants also produced ‘A Gentleman in Gotham’ for Detective Comics #63, as the Caped Crusader had to confront tuxedoed International Man of Mystery Mr. Baffle, after which the Crime Clown again reared his tousled viridian head in ‘The Joker Walks the Last Mile’ (#64, June 1942).

Each tale here is preceded by the stunning cover of the issue and Detective Comics #65 was a particularly superb patriotic example by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon with Batman and Robin welcoming the Boy Commandos to the title – even though they had actually begun thrashing the Hun a month earlier. The mesmerising Dark Knight tale for the issue featured art by Jack Burnley & George Roussos illustrating Greene’s poignant and powerful North Woods thriller ‘The Cop who Hated Batman!’

The tales produced during the darkest days of World War II were among the very best of the Golden Age and it’s no coincidence that many of these vintage treasures are also some of most reprinted tales in the Batman canon. With chief writer Bill Finger at a peak of creativity and production, everybody on the Home Front was keen to do their bit – even it that was simply making kids of all ages forget their troubles for a brief while…

‘The Crimes of Two-Face’, (Detective #66, August 1942, by Finger, Kane & Robinson) was a classical tragedy in crime-caper guise as Gotham District Attorney Harvey Kent (the name was later changed to Dent) was brutally disfigured whilst in court and went mad – becoming the conflicted villain who remains one of the Caped Crusader’s greatest and most compelling foes to this day.

Detective #67 featured the Penguin who gained his avian Modus Operandi and obsession as ‘Crime’s Early Bird!’ after which Two-Face’s personal horror-story continued in ‘The Man Who Led a Double Life’ as the conflicted fallen idol attempted – and failed – to win back his ideal lost life, following which Joseph Greene scripted the Joker’s final escapade of this volume with perilous pranks and menace aplenty in the calamitous case of ‘The Harlequin’s Hoax!’

The fantastic fantasy and gritty melodrama concludes with the decidedly different threat of ‘The Man Who Could Read Minds!’ an off-beat psycho-thriller from Don Cameron which saw Batman risk his secret identity to stop a merciless, bloodthirsty telepath in a dynamic masterpiece which premiered in Detective Comics #70.

The stories here show the creators and characters at their absolute peak and they’re even more readable now that I don’t have to worry if I’m wrecking an historical treasure simply by turning a page.

These stories cemented the popularity of Batman and Robin and brought a modicum of joy and relief to millions during a time of tremendous hardship and crisis. Even if these days aren’t quite as perilous or desperate, the power of such work to arouse and charm is still potent and just as necessary.
© 1941, 1942, 1991 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Amazing Spider-Man: Spider Island


By Dan Slott, Fred Van Lente, Rick Remender, Humberto Ramos, Stefano Caselli  & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-501-7

When the Spider-Man continuity was drastically and controversially altered for the ‘Brand New Day’ publishing event a refreshed, now single-and-never-been-married Peter Parker was parachuted into a new life, so if this is your first Web-spinning yarn in a while – or if you’re drawing your cues from the movies – prepare yourself for a little confusion. That being said, this classy collection of Web-spun wonderment is more accessible than most: a spectacular summer blockbuster yarn with New York overwhelmed by monsters, a hideous all-consuming threat and packed to the spiracles (look it up: I’m being clever again) with returning villains from Spidey’s less complicated glory-days…

Gathering Spider-Island: Deadly Foes, Amazing Spider-Man #666-672, Venom #6-8, and background material, original art, text-features and interviews from Marvel Spotlight Spider-Island, the manic Marvel mayhem commences when clone-builder Miles Warren AKA The Jackal resurrects the warped Peter Parker doppelganger Kaine and upgrades him for malicious purposes and a hidden new boss; turning the recent cadaver into a monstrous multi-limbed humanoid Tarantula…

Meanwhile in ‘Prologue: the One and Only’ the webslinger is riding a wave of popularity in New York City despite every effort of new Mayor J. Jonah Jameson and even in his civilian identity is having a pretty good life. The original hard-luck kid has a great, well-paid job designing high-tech gadgets, is fast friends with the city’s greatest scientists Tony Stark and Reed Richards and even has a devoted, hot, new girlfriend; forensic cop Carlie Cooper.

But now, something very strange is happening: all over Manhattan people are starting to manifest spider-powers and government asset Flash Thompson is put on alert in his role as new black-ops agent Venom, keeping the supposedly retired and disabled war-hero from the bedside of his estranged and terminal father…

When Peter recently lost his Spider-sense, clairvoyant arachnid hero Madame Web convinced him to study martial arts with Shang-Chi, fabled Master of Kung Fu, to prepare for a dire future crisis, but his hectic schedule – constantly moving from Horizon Labs to Fantastic Four HQ and Avengers Mansion – means he is one of the last to know that a manufactured plague is turning New York into a city of Spider People, just as Jackal, Tarantula and their sultry secret leader are unleashing yet another arachnoid atrocity…

‘The Amazing Spider-Manhattan’ sees the infestation grow as Carlie reveals she has Spider-powers and the Jackal assembles an army of arachnid-enhanced thugs to plunder and run riot, further spreading the contagion. A city-wide epidemic forces Jameson to close all exits from the New York and quarantine the populace as the superheroes begin a desperate holding action against a wave of wall-crawling criminals.

When the original-and-genuine tries to join them in ‘Peter Parker, the Unspectacular Spider-Man’ he is sent away since he’s indistinguishable from many of the thugs, but the indomitable lad soon finds a way to strike back and even recruit reinforcements for the hard-pressed defenders.

Across town Venom is stalking the cause of the plague and Eddie Brock, originally possessed by the selfsame alien Symbiote, discovers that he has become a natural cure for the Spider-infection: a living ‘Anti-Venom’…

The covert paramilitary predator had overcome and captured the Jackal’s new Spider-King, but the whole operation was a trick; allowing the beast to sneak thousands of spider-babies out of the quarantined city, ready to infect the entire country. Moreover when Flash discovers that the original identity of the horrific Spider-King was in fact America’s greatest hero he is caught between honour and duty…

In ‘Arachnotopia’ Peter Parker is leading the fightback but helpless to combat the next stage of the disease as victims begin to mutate from spider-powered humans into carnivorous, monstrous eight-legged freaks. His life is made even more difficult when he sees Carlie so clearly using his powers better than he ever did…

Meanwhile Reed Richards, frantically seeking a cure, sees that complete infestation of Manhattan is only a matter of hours away…

With the mystery mastermind revealed there are ‘Spiders, Spiders Everywhere’ but a glimmer of hope remains as Flash/Venom infiltrates the Queen’s arachnoid inner circle, just as Peter’s old flame Mary Jane Watson discovers her own inner arthropod and joins the struggle armed with an advantage no other infectee can – or would want to – boast…

The next Venom instalment sees Flash clash with Anti-Venom before dragging the all-too-willing Brock back to Reed Richards…

Meanwhile the Queen has established mental contact with every victim and uses them as a battery: a web of life feeding her transformative energy and, when the cure is synthesised, she compels all her thralls to resist it and the people administering it…

In the final Venom episode Flash valiantly tackles the Queen head-on but is easily defeated. Luckily one of the first infectees to be cured was that legendary hero trapped inside the Spider-King…

Unfortunately the disease has already reached peak infection and the triumphant Queen transforms into a skyscraper-sized arachnoid colossus ready and able to turn the world into a planet of spiders. With everything to fight for and no hope, Mary Jane and a most unexpected ally lead one final assault by the remaining assembled heroes on the monumental monstrosity, giving the one true Amazing Spider-Man a valiant last chance to spectacularly save everyone…

In ‘Epilogue: the Naked City’ a city wide “Morning After” focuses on the staggering aftermath of the climactic clash and cannily resets the scene for a fresh start in the Spidey universe with departures, arrivals and a whole new outlook for Marvel’s most iconic hero…

Although not necessary, readers might also benefit from a quick re-reading of Spectacular Spider-Man: Disassembled, but this gloriously bombastic rollercoaster action-romp from writers Dan Slott, Fred Van Lente and Rick Remender, illustrated by Humberto Ramos, Stefano Caselli, Tom Fowler, Minck Oosterveer, Carlos Cuevas, Victor Olazaba & Karl Kesel forms not only a terrific Fights ‘n’ Tights tale but also serves as a stand-alone saga and perfect jumping-on point for readers new or returning. With the aforementioned added features pages and a stunning gallery of variant covers by

Ramos, Greg Land, Gabriele Dell’Otto, Stephanie Hans & Stuart Immonen Spider-Island is possibly one of the best Spider-Man books in years.

This British edition of Amazing Spider-Man: Spider Island is set for release on January 19th 2012.
™ & © 2012 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. Italy. A British Edition by Panini UK Ltd.

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Showcase Presents Elongated Man


By Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1042-2

Once upon a time American comics editors believed readers would become jaded if  characters were over-used or over-exposed and so to combat that potential danger – and for sundry other commercial and economic reasons – they developed back-up features in most of their titles. By the mid-1960s the policy was largely abandoned as resurgent superheroes sprang up everywhere and readers just couldn’t get enough…but there were still one or two memorable holdouts.

In late 1963 Julius Schwartz took editorial control of Batman and Detective Comics and finally found a place for a character who had been lying mostly fallow ever since his debut as a walk-on in the April/May 1960 Flash.

The Elongated Man was Ralph Dibny, a circus-performer who discovered an additive in soft drink Gingold which seemed to give certain people increased muscular flexibility. Intrigued, he refined the chemical until he had developed a serum which gave him the ability to stretch, bend and compress his body to an incredible degree. Then Ralph had to decide how to use his new powers…

This charming, witty and very pretty compilation gathers all the Flash guest appearances from issues #112, 115, 119, 124, 130, 134, and 138 spanning April/May 1960 to August 1963 before re-presenting the Stretchable Sleuth’s entire scintillating run from Detective Comics #327-371 (May 1964-January 1968).

Designed as a modern take on the classic Golden Age champion Plastic Man, Dibny debuted in Flash #112 in ‘The Mystery of the Elongated Man!’ as a mysterious masked yet attention-seeking elastic do-gooder, of whom the Scarlet Speedster was nonetheless highly suspicious, in a cunningly crafted crime caper by John Broome, Carmine Infantino & Joe Giella. Dibny returned in #115 (September 1960 and inked by Murphy Anderson) when aliens attempted to conquer the Earth and the Vizier of Velocity needed ‘The Elongated Man’s Secret Weapon!’ as well as the guest-star himself to save the day.

In Flash #119 (March 1961), Flash rescued the vanished hero from ‘The Elongated Man’s Undersea Trap!’ which introduced the vivacious Sue Dibny (as a newly wed “Mrs Elongated Man”) in a mysterious and stirring tale of sub-sea alien slavers by regular creative team Broome, Infantino & Giella.

The threat was again extraterrestrial with #124′s alien invasion thriller ‘Space-Boomerang Trap!’ (November 1961) which featured an uneasy alliance between the Scarlet Speedster, Elongated Man and the sinister Captain Boomerang who naturally couldn’t be trusted as far as you could throw him…

Ralph collaborated with Flash’s junior partner in #130 (August 1962) only just defeating the wily Weather Wizard when ‘Kid Flash Meets the Elongated Man!’ but then sprang back into action with – and against – the senior partner in Flash #134 (February 1963), seemingly allied with Captain Cold ‘The Man who Mastered Absolute Zero!’ in a flamboyant thriller that almost ended his budding heroic career…

Gardner Fox scripted ‘The Pied Piper’s Double Doom!’ in Flash #138 (August 1963) a mesmerising team-up which saw both Elongated Man and the Scarlet Speedster enslaved by the Sinister Sultan of Sound, before ingenuity and justice finally prevailed.

When the back-up spot opened in Detective Comics (a position held by the Martian Manhunter since 1955 and only vacated because J’onn J’onzz had been promoted to the lead position in House of Mystery) Schwartz had Ralph Dibny slightly reconfigured as a flamboyant, fame-hungry, brilliantly canny travelling private eye solving mysteries for the sheer fun of it. Aided by his equally smart but thoroughly grounded wife, the short tales were patterned on the classic “Thin Man” filmic adventures of Nick and Norah Charles, blending clever, impossible crimes with slick sleuthing, all garnished with the outré heroic permutations and frantic physical antics first perfected in Jack Cole’s Plastic Man.

These complex yet uncomplicated sorties, drenched in fanciful charm and sly dry wit, began in Detective Comics #327 (May 1964) and ‘Ten Miles to Nowhere!’ (by Fox & Infantino, who inked himself for all the early episodes) wherein Ralph, who had publicly unmasked and become a minor celebrity, discovered that someone had been stealing his car and bringing it back as if nothing had happened. Of course it had to be a clever criminal plot of some sort…

A month later he solved the ‘Curious Case of the Barn-door Bandit!’ and debuted his rather revolting trademark of manically twitching his expanded nose whenever he “detected the scent of mystery in the air” before heading for cowboy country to unravel the ‘Puzzle of the Purple Pony!’ and play cupid for a young couple hunting a gold mine in #329.

Ralph and Sue were on an extended honeymoon tour, making him the only costumed hero without a city to protect. When they reached California Ralph became embroiled in a ‘Desert Double-Cross!’ where hostage-taking thieves raided the home of a wealthy recluse after which Detective #331 offered a rare full-length story in ‘Museum of Mixed-Up Men!’ (Fox, Infantino & Giella) as Batman, Robin and the Elongated Man united against a super-scientific felon able to steal memories and reshape victims’ faces.

Returned to a solo support role in #332, the Ductile Detective discovered Sue had been replaced by an alien in ‘The Elongated Man’s Other-World Wife!’ (with Sid Greene becoming the new permanent inker). Of course, nothing was as it seemed…

‘The Robbery That Never Happened!’ began when a jewellery-store customer suspiciously claimed he had been given too much change whilst ‘Battle of the Elongated Weapons!’ in #334 concentrated on a crook who had adapted Ralph’s Gingold serum to affect objects, after which bombastic battle it was back to mystery-solving when the Elongated Man was invited by Fairview City to round up a brazen bunch of uncatchable bandits in ‘Break Up of the Bottleneck Gang!’

While visiting Central City again Ralph was lured to the Mirror Master’s old lair and only barely survived ‘The House of “Flashy” Traps!’ and then risked certain death in the ‘Case of the 20 Grand Pay-off!’ by replacing Sue with a look-alike – for the best possible reasons – but without her knowledge or permission…

Narrowly surviving his wife’s wrath by turning the American tour into a World cruise, Ralph then tackled the ‘Case of the Curious Compass!’ in Amsterdam, foiling a gang of diamond smugglers, before returning to America and ferreting out funny-money pushers in ‘The Counterfeit Crime-Buster!’

Globe-trotting creator John Broome returned to script ‘Mystery of the Millionaire Cowboy!’ in Detective #340 (June 1965) as Ralph and Sue stumbled onto a seemingly haunted theatre and found crooks at the heart of the matter, whilst ‘The Elongated Man’s Change-of-Face!’ (by Fox, Infantino & Greene) saw a desperate newsman publish fake exploits to draw the fame-fuelled hero into investigating a town under siege, and ‘The Bandits and the Baroness!’ (Broome) saw the perpetually vacationing couple check in at a resort where every other guest was a Ralph Dibny, in a classy insurance scam story heavy with intrigue and tension.

A second full-length team-up with Batman featured in Detective Comics #343 (September 1965, by Broome, Infantino & Giella), in ‘The Secret War of the Phantom General!’; a tense action-thriller pitting the hard-pressed heroes against a hidden army of gangsters and Nazi war criminals, determined to take over Gotham City.

Having broken Ralph’s biggest case the happy couple headed for the Continent and encountered ‘Peril in Paris!’ (Broome, Infantino & Greene) when Sue went shopping as an ignorant American and returned a few hours later a fluent French-speaker…

‘Robberies in Reverse!’ (Fox) saw a baffling situation when shopkeepers began paying customers, leading Ralph to a severely skewed scientist’s accidental discovery whilst #346’s ‘Peephole to the Future!’ (Broome) saw the Elongated Man inexplicably develop the power of clairvoyance, which cleared up long before he could use it to tackle ‘The Man Who Hated Money!’ (Fox); a bandit who destroyed every penny he stole.

‘My Wife, the Witch!’ was Greene’s last ink job for a nearly a year; a Fox thriller wherein Sue apparently gained magical powers whilst ‘The 13 O’clock Robbery!’ with Infantino again inking his own work, found Ralph walk into a bizarre mystery and deadly booby-trapped mansion, before Hal Jordan’s best friend sought out the stretchable Sleuth to solve the riddle of ‘Green Lantern’s Blackout!’ – an entrancing, action-packed team-up with a future Justice League colleague, after which ‘The Case of the Costume-made Crook!’ found the Elongated Man ambushed by a felon using his old uniform as a implausible burglary tool.

Broome devised ‘The Counter of Monte Carlo!’ as the peripatetic Dibnys fell into a colossal espionage conspiracy at the casino and became pawns of a fortune teller in ‘The Puzzling Prophecies of the Tea Leaves!’ (Fox) before Broome delighted one more time with ‘The Double-Dealing Jewel Thieves!’ as a museum owner found that his imitation jewel exhibit was indeed filled with fakes…

As Fox assumed full scripting duties Mystic Minx Zatanna guest-starred in #355’s ‘The Tantalising Troubles of the Tripod Thieves!’, wherein stolen magical artefacts led Ralph into conflict with a band of violent thugs whilst ‘Truth Behind the False Faces!’ saw Infantino bow out on a high note as the Elongated Man helped a beat cop to his first big bust and solved the conundrum of a criminal wax museum.

Detective #357 (November 1966) featured ‘Tragedy of the Too-Lucky Thief!‘ (by Fox, Murphy Anderson & Greene) as the Dibnys discovered a gambler who hated to win but could not lose whilst Greene handled all the art on ‘The Faker-Takers of the Baker’s Dozen!’ wherein Sue’s latest artistic project led to the theft of a ancient masterpiece. Anderson soloed with Fox’s ‘Riddle of the Sleepytime Taxi!’, a compelling and glamorous tale of theft and espionage and when Ralph and Sue hit Swinging England in Detective #360 (February 1967, Fox & Anderson) with ‘London Caper of the Rockers and Mods!’, they met the monarch and prevented warring kid-gangs from desecrating our most famous tourist traps before heading home to ‘The Curious Clue of the Circus Crook!’ (Greene), wherein Ralph visited his old Big-Top boss and stopped a rash of robberies which had followed the show around the country.

Infantino found time in his increasingly busy schedule for a few more episodes, (both inked by Greene) beginning with ‘The Horse that Hunted Hoods’, a police steed with uncanny crime solving abilities, and continuing in a ‘Way-out Day in Wishbone City!’ wherein normally solid citizens – and even Sue – went temporarily insane and started a riot, after which unsung master Irv Novick stepped in to delineate the mystery of ‘The Ship That Sank Twice!’

‘The Crooks who Captured Themselves!’ (#365, with art by Greene) found Ralph losing control of his powers whilst Broome & Infantino reunited one last time for ‘Robber Round-up in Kiddy City!’ as, for a change, Sue sniffed out a theme-park mystery for Ralph to solve and Infantino finally bowed out with the superb ‘Enigma of the Elongated Evildoer!’ (written by Fox and inked by Greene) as the Debonair Detectives found a thief in a ski lodge who seemed to possess all Ralph’s elastic abilities…

The Atom guest-starred in #368, helping battle clock-criminal Chronos in ‘The Treacherous Time-Trap!’ by Fox, Gil Kane, Greene and iconoclastic newcomer Neal Adams illustrated the poignant puzzler ‘Legend of the Lover’s Lantern!’, after which Kane & Greene limned the intriguing all-action ‘Case of the Colorless Cash!’. The end of the year signalled the end of an era as Fox, Mike Sekowsky & Greene finished off the Elongated Man’s expansive run with the delightfully dizzy lost-loot yarn ‘The Bellringer and the Baffling Bongs’ (#371, January 1968).

With the next issue Detective Comics became an all Bat-family title and Ralph and Sue Dibny temporarily faded from view until revived as bit players in Flash and finally recruited into the Justice League as semi-regulars. Their charismatic relationship and unique genteel style has however, not been seen again: casualties of changing comics tastes and the replacement of sophistication with angsty shouting and testosterone-fuelled sturm und drang…

Witty, bright, clever and genuinely exciting these smart stories from a lost age are all beautiful to look at and a joy to read for any sharp kid and all joy-starved adults. This book is a shining tribute to the very best of DC’s Silver Age and a volume no fan of fun and adventure should be without.
© 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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X-Men: Schism


By Jason Aaron, Kieron Gillen, Carlos Pacheco, Frank Cho, Daniel Acuña, Alan Davis, Adam Kubert, Tim Seeley, Billy Tan & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-502-4

Radical change – or at least the appearance of such – is a cornerstone of modern comics. There must be a constant changing of the guard, a shifting of scene and milieu and, in latter times, a regular diet of death, resurrection and rebirth.

A case in point is this rather impressive restating of the Mutant paradigm from Marvel wherein the latest status quo gets the boot and a new beginning equates with a return to the old days…

Most people who read comics have a passing familiarity with Marvel’s ever-changing X-Men franchise and newcomers or occasional consumers won’t have too much trouble following the backstory so let’s plunge in as the hostile world once more kicks sand in the faces of the planet’s most dangerous and reviled minority…

This utterly engrossing tome (collecting X-Men Schism #1-5, Generation Hope #10-11 and X-Men ReGenesis) finds the world’s mutant population reduced to a couple of hundred desperate souls living in self-imposed exile on an island dubbed “Utopia” located in San Francisco Bay.

Although generally welcomed by most of the easygoing residents of the city, tensions are high and with X-Men team-leader Cyclops running the colony in an increasingly draconian manner, his relationship with war-weary second-in-command Wolverine is slowly, inexorably deteriorating…

Matters come to head when Logan refuses to train the latest batch of kids in combat techniques, concerned that these newest mutants are being cheated of their childhoods, after which Quentin Quire, a 16-year old anarchist telepath provokes an frantic armed response from human world leaders at an arms limitation conference intended to convince humanity to abandon their “defensive” anti-mutant weapons; which generally equates to giant robotic Sentinels of various vintages…

With the world once again on alert against “Homo Superior” attacks, every nation is frantically rearming, but the robots have all degenerated into rampaging menaces attacking their owners – if they work at all – and the assembled mutants and assorted superheroes are kept busy saving humans from their own bellicose paranoid folly…

Meanwhile a bunch of very human rich kids make a move of their own. The greedy, remorseless and ambitious scions of munitions millionaires, human traffickers and deranged scientists have waited long enough for what’s theirs and, after murdering their parents and guardians, take over the Hellfire Club to initiate their scheme of ruling the Earth before they hit puberty…

As their cynical, vicious plan unfolds, the embattled Utopians become the unwitting target of increasingly bloody attacks and Cyclops and Wolverine catastrophically clash over the role of the super-powered children in their care, almost oblivious of the launch of the new super-Sentinel devised by the impatient new Hellfire kids…

Although Utopia is saved in the nick of time, the policy-split leads to a sundering of the Mutants as Wolverine leads many of the youngest kids and some of Cyclops’ oldest, but most disappointed and disaffected, friends to a place where they can attempt a different way of living, leaving the island as a highly visible fortress against and target of human aggression; populated by warriors and militaristic genocide-survivors ready to take the Race – or perhaps more correctly, Species – War to their oppressors…

The core miniseries was scripted by Jason Aaron and illustrated by Carlos Pacheco, Frank Cho, Daniel Acuña, Alan Davis, Adam Kubert, Cam Smith, Mark Farmer & Mark Roslan with Kieron Gillen writing the intersecting chapters from Generation Hope and the epilogue X-Men ReGenesis drawn by Tim Seeley and Billy Tan, respectively.

If you crave fast, furious and fulfilling Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction this is a nearly perfect one-shop stop for your edification and delectation.

X-Men Schism is scheduled for release on January 19th 2012.

™ & © 2012 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. Italy. A British Edition by Panini UK Ltd. ™ and © 2012 Marvel Entertainment LCC and its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. A British edition released by Panini UK Ltd.